One of the (innumerable, reflective but less fraught) questions Covid has raised—with all our Zooming and isolation, and trying to do things alone on our own at home: I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between live, online, and recorded. Working on my own recording process at home (with my new gear!), I'm thinking of projects differently during Covid.
It's like I'm starting from live. (And wanting to keep it simple!) How many takes, how much editing? Where does this come down, somewhere between professional edited and live? How many steps away from live and into recorded should I take? Should I use the first half of one take, the second half of another? Does more editing somehow damage the integrity, the authenticity of the recording?
Am I trying to replace live? Because live is not an option, I want to stay closer to it. I do think a single take transmits a kind of magic, a coherency, a unity? Dunno. . but something . . . [More on this in re. this Tre-Re, A Felicidade: go to Tre-Re under Music, above~]
Friends who are theatre people have been so brave, putting together readings and shows on Zoom, magically lining up the boxes so it looks like the actors are looking at and speaking to each other! And of course, performers and audience are live in real time, just not in contiguous space (mm nice word:).
For a performer, the loss of live is sort of like an amputation, where what’s gone remains still very much in awareness, like ghosts & shadows of what was part of you before. Even now, with all these losses, life (which is creativity) holds on tight all the same, weirdly persistent and sometimes infinitely worthy.